Refocus

For Jill Lublin, CEO of Promising Promotion in Novato, CA and author of Guerilla Publicity, the downturn happened right before Sept. 11 and got her thinking. "The truth is, I wasn't really doing what I loved," she says. "I ended up managing people instead of doing what I wanted, which was strategic publicity." So she reformulated her business from a flagging seven-employee PR agency to a successful home based, two person PR strategy firm. She formed alliances with publicity professionals to implement the strategies for her clients. "What really helped me to create profitability in a downturn was to simplify services, make them more accessible and make them affordable," Lublin says.